Strawberry Marshmallows

A few weeks ago, we visited the Magical Lantern Festival at Chiswick House in London. It was a lovely evening and the lanterns are amazing – I can highly recommend it!

While we were walking around there was a stall selling marshmallows in all different flavours (I had raspberry and prosecco), and some fire pits so you could toast them too. They were so much better than any marshmallows you buy in a bag from a supermarket, so I thought I would look at how difficult they would be to make myself. As it turns out, they are not too tricky at all, provided you have a good free-standing mixer.

As we have a quiet weekend (very unusual for us!), I thought this was the perfect opportunity to give them a try! I found a simple sounding recipe on the Olive Magazine website, for raspberry ripple mallows.

I tweaked the recipe a bit (mainly because there appeared to be a local shortage of raspberries the day I went to buy them!), I have used strawberries in my recipe.

Here is my version:

Ingredients:

12 gelatine leaves

500g granulated sugar

1 rounded tbsp liquid glucose

2 large egg whites

300g fresh strawberries

food colouring

75g icing sugar

75g cornflour

Method:

Line a large, deep square or rectangle dish with oiled cling film or baking parchment.

Chop the strawberries into 1cm pieces, then heat in a microwave for 2-3 minutes, or until soft. Mash through a sieve with a fork into a jug to extract the juices – I got just under 200mls from mine.

Soften the gelatine leaves in cold water.

Put the sugar, liquid glucose and 200ml water in a saucepan. While this is warming, whisk the egg whites in a mixer until they are stiff peaks. Heat gently the sugar solution until the sugar dissolves, then boil rapidly. Ideally you should use a sugar thermometer (I didn’t, but probably should have done – I am going to invest in one!) – once the sugar reached 125C on a sugar thermometer, remove from the boil and pour slowly into the egg whites, whisking all the time.

Once the sugar and eggs are combined, squeeze the water from the gelatine leaves and beat these in too – they will dissolve in the warmth of the mixture. Once the gelatine is fully combined, pour in the strawberry solution and and continue to whisk until the mixture is very thick (mine had reached the top of the bowl by this point – it took around 10 minutes).

Transfer roughly half the mixture to a second bowl and add some food colouring (I recommend you don’t use food colouring paste for this, as it doesn’t mix well and you get blobs of colouring in the mix) Whisk enough food colouring into one of the bowls to get a lovely pink colour.

Spoon the mixes into the lined dish, putting blobs of each around the bowl and once they have all been transferred you can stir a little to combine the mixes.

Leave at room temperature for a few hours to set (don’t set it in the fridge – you can’t rush this one!).

Before turning out the mallows, mix the cornflour and icing sugar and liberally dust the top of the mallow. Place your chopping board over the top of the dish and turn over.

Peel off the cling film/paper, then using an oiled knife, slice into chunks of your desired size. I got around 35 (very generous) portions from mine.

Dust each piece well with the flour/sugar mix, then store in an airtight container.

Eat within three days (I promise you this won’t be a problem!)

I had so many I bundled up some to give to family and friends – they make a lovely alternative gift for someone!